Today is March the 1st and two things come to
mind; 1) this is the day when across the board cuts in both the government and
the military are due to start and 2) a visit to the grocery store reminded me
of why a vegetable garden can have some import on ones life.
Iceberg lettuce at $2 a head, bell peppers at $1 and even
yellow onions going for .99 a pound were things that struck me this day. A
fellow shopper and friend I ran into also remarked at the insanely high price
of vegetables while showing me his pitiful pile of purchases resting in the
bottom of his shopping cart. I smiled (inwardly) and agreed with him having
gone down that same isle myself at little earlier. Only, for my part, I passed
on the bell pepper for a buck deal. Way too expensive for my meager budget.
In another post, I talked about trying to grow the ‘perfect’
onions from sets. Actually, that may not be fair, as I feel any edible vegetable to be ‘perfect’ in
some way. The main thing is to make sure you prepare you garden soil as early
in the spring as you can work it and that you make a plan on what to plant and
follow through. I.E. – that you actually end up with something for the plate or
stew pot that also doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg! In my case, and for this
season, I’m going to focus on high impact vegetables that will reduce the pain
at the produce isle as much as possible! Here are my top five are in no
particular order:
Potatoes – sure
at $2.99 for a five pound bag, you might not think the lowly potato a good
choice. However, given the fact that they are so easy to grow and that they
offer a calorie per gram, I’m making sure to sow a four by four foot area this
spring.
Carrots – When
you talk about a vegetable that is both highly productive and nutritious, then
the carrot goes far in my mind. An added plus is the small amount of space needed
to produce a harvest that can keep over the next winter in the ground to be
used a needed!
Bell Peppers –
This is a ‘must have’ item in my book – I use bell peppers a lot in my salads
during the summer as a substitute for celery which I cannot grow and which seem
to remain high all year long in terms of cost. Due to the long growing cycle, I
also purchase these as starts and don’t bother to grow them from seed. The
small added cost in the spring is still offset come fall when these guys rise
rapidly in price. They also can be chopped and frozen to be used in chilis and
such over the winter! In this category are included a few plantings of
Habanera’s and Long Red cayenne’s.
Romaine – These
hearty versions of the watery iceberg lettuce I buy at the grocery store are
much more nutritious and even a small planting, when properly spaced, go a long
way! I plant this easy to grow veggie in the spring and then again in the fall.
For the winter period, I also make sure to start some in cold frames in October
so that they get to edible size and then go into ‘suspended animation’ inside
the closed frames over the winter months!
Onions – When grown
from sets, onions are almost a no brainer vegetable to grow. They can be
planted together or thrown around into odd places all around the garden. And,
while they may lack a bit in the nutritional department, they more than make up
for that in terms of versatility around the kitchen. I used them in salads, as
a topping on hamburgers and in most of my vegetable soup creations!
Well, that rounds out the list of my must have, high impact
vegetables for the spring of 2013. And, while I surly will plant some other
varieties (cherry tomatoes come to mind), I think these five will have the
biggest impact in terms of saving a few bucks over the coming year!
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